K
knash1
New member
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2009
- Messages
- 1
Hi all,
I wondered if anyone would be able to give me a bit of advice RE: my brother's behaviour. I moved back in with my mum and brother in March, and since then I've noticed him acting progressively worse, with some quite strange behaviour. He's always been known for being quite 'slow', always making silly mistakes (filling the kettle up with milk once!) and often disregarding people's feelings (inviting 10 friends over at 2am on a Tuesday for a party!), but it's always been put down to being a typical teenage. But recently there has been a whole new side to his behaviour
He's 20 and has just finished his second year at Uni and has no job. He's lost about 2 stone through not eating for a day then gorging, and sits around the house all day, smoking about 50 cigarettes a night and drinking countless cups of coffee (A good 8-9 a day). He always looks as though he is in a daze and stares past you, and quite often you have to repeat something 2 or 3 times before he hears you. Quite often he needs you to repeat it in a different context because he hasn't quite understood.
He also seems to have lost alot of his sense of reality -he missed his Uni exam the other day, and went up there - Having driven my mum's car up there without asking and without a driving license- at 8pm, thinking he could just redo it whenever he liked). Yesterday he was insistent we drove him up to Eltham in London, where he was at Uni (he hasn't lied there since he left halls in May), but he couldnt explain why he wanted us to take him there.
Quite often we will catch him just smiling to himself. The day he took my mums car I saw him walking down the road, just smiling to himself as he let himself into the house, as though he has no idea what he has just done is wrong.
Last night it all came to a head. We would be talking to him and he would just randomly say a sentence that came out of nowhere- We were talking about banks for example, and he said "well it is a tudor building", for example, and then started accusing me of giving one of our towels to my gay friends! He is off on holiday today, and my dad asked him to give his friend a call to check he was still able to come. He took one look at my dad, left the house for 15 minutes without saying a word, and came back with some skunk and a 300 DVD
He plonked the DVD on the table, gave my mum the drugs saying "no hard feelings" and then went over to a cupboard, pulled out a sword and propped it against the wall, and sat back down again in silence. He could explain why he had just taken a sword out of the cupboard!
My stpemum suggested we take him up to A&E to see if we could see the psychiatrist (it was about 9pm by then). In the car he kept asking us to take him to the train station (we later asked him why, and he said he wanted to do something 'spiritual and spontaneouis'- Sit in a lift and go up and down), and he started pointing at the No Smoking sign outside the hospital saying "Have you ever seen such a f***** up smoking sign?!".
We eventually spoke to a doctor who after assessing him basically said they thought his reaction was to do with drugs (we know he does occasionally smoke skunk, but to be honest I don't think it's very regular, he has had absolutely no money since he left Uni and just sits around the house all day watching TV and making countless cups of tea/smoking cigarettes). The thing was as soon as the doctor came in, all the random sentences stopped, and he was almost acting normally. The doctor would ask how uni was and he said it was going well (it's not, he's failed the year), and he also told him he smokes cigarettes very little and sleeps well- Obviously all this is not true!
We then saw a psychiatrist, and my brother behaved in the same way, answering the questions fairly normally. They suggested he went to the GP- So that's the stage we are at now. For some stupid reason he's been allowed to go on this trip away (3 days). This morning he was behaving in quite an odd way- They were late for the flight and he was insistent on having a bath and charging his phone, which there was obviuously no time to do!
I just wondered if anyone had a similar experience or had any idea as to what they think could be the issue here? Would really be interested to hear what people think, at the moment my mum is just in denial and burying her head in the sand, whereas I think there is evidently something wrong which needs addressing sooner rather than later.
Thanks
I wondered if anyone would be able to give me a bit of advice RE: my brother's behaviour. I moved back in with my mum and brother in March, and since then I've noticed him acting progressively worse, with some quite strange behaviour. He's always been known for being quite 'slow', always making silly mistakes (filling the kettle up with milk once!) and often disregarding people's feelings (inviting 10 friends over at 2am on a Tuesday for a party!), but it's always been put down to being a typical teenage. But recently there has been a whole new side to his behaviour
He's 20 and has just finished his second year at Uni and has no job. He's lost about 2 stone through not eating for a day then gorging, and sits around the house all day, smoking about 50 cigarettes a night and drinking countless cups of coffee (A good 8-9 a day). He always looks as though he is in a daze and stares past you, and quite often you have to repeat something 2 or 3 times before he hears you. Quite often he needs you to repeat it in a different context because he hasn't quite understood.
He also seems to have lost alot of his sense of reality -he missed his Uni exam the other day, and went up there - Having driven my mum's car up there without asking and without a driving license- at 8pm, thinking he could just redo it whenever he liked). Yesterday he was insistent we drove him up to Eltham in London, where he was at Uni (he hasn't lied there since he left halls in May), but he couldnt explain why he wanted us to take him there.
Quite often we will catch him just smiling to himself. The day he took my mums car I saw him walking down the road, just smiling to himself as he let himself into the house, as though he has no idea what he has just done is wrong.
Last night it all came to a head. We would be talking to him and he would just randomly say a sentence that came out of nowhere- We were talking about banks for example, and he said "well it is a tudor building", for example, and then started accusing me of giving one of our towels to my gay friends! He is off on holiday today, and my dad asked him to give his friend a call to check he was still able to come. He took one look at my dad, left the house for 15 minutes without saying a word, and came back with some skunk and a 300 DVD

My stpemum suggested we take him up to A&E to see if we could see the psychiatrist (it was about 9pm by then). In the car he kept asking us to take him to the train station (we later asked him why, and he said he wanted to do something 'spiritual and spontaneouis'- Sit in a lift and go up and down), and he started pointing at the No Smoking sign outside the hospital saying "Have you ever seen such a f***** up smoking sign?!".
We eventually spoke to a doctor who after assessing him basically said they thought his reaction was to do with drugs (we know he does occasionally smoke skunk, but to be honest I don't think it's very regular, he has had absolutely no money since he left Uni and just sits around the house all day watching TV and making countless cups of tea/smoking cigarettes). The thing was as soon as the doctor came in, all the random sentences stopped, and he was almost acting normally. The doctor would ask how uni was and he said it was going well (it's not, he's failed the year), and he also told him he smokes cigarettes very little and sleeps well- Obviously all this is not true!
We then saw a psychiatrist, and my brother behaved in the same way, answering the questions fairly normally. They suggested he went to the GP- So that's the stage we are at now. For some stupid reason he's been allowed to go on this trip away (3 days). This morning he was behaving in quite an odd way- They were late for the flight and he was insistent on having a bath and charging his phone, which there was obviuously no time to do!
I just wondered if anyone had a similar experience or had any idea as to what they think could be the issue here? Would really be interested to hear what people think, at the moment my mum is just in denial and burying her head in the sand, whereas I think there is evidently something wrong which needs addressing sooner rather than later.
Thanks